DMS (DankMaterialShell)
Shares rank 19 of 24 desktop environments by recommenders
Recommended for its polished look, fast development and batteries-included setup that saves hours of tweaking. Critics call it heavyweight and sluggish.
Recommended for its polished look, fast development and batteries-included setup that saves hours of tweaking. Critics call it heavyweight and sluggish.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Batteries included, less ricing
“allowing you to use the window manager without having to spend hours ricing your system”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released” “the base DMS configuration has a lot more batteries included so I switched”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “DMS 1.5 "The Wolverine" Released”
Other desktop environments people recommend
The four most recommended other desktop environments, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KDE Plasma | 650 | 264 | 71% | 13 | 2 yrs79 owners | Approved |
| GNOME | 340 | 464 | 42% | 12 | 5 yrs29 owners | — |
| Xfce | 183 | 48 | 79% | 12 | 10 yrs29 owners | Approved |
| COSMIC desktop | 75 | 28 | 73% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| DMS (DankMaterialShell)This page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“super heavyweight | sluggish | lots of eye candy, GUI configurable”
“allowing you to use the window manager without having to spend hours ricing your system”
“Seems like a worse docker.”
“the base DMS configuration has a lot more batteries included so I switched”
“the overall visual appearance, pace of development, and ecosystem around DMS made me switch”
“without the baggage of telling people I use Dank”
“I think it has a lot more promise and can be stacked with various quantization schemes.”
“DMS is more customizable.”
“derivative, templated wevsite telling me to pipe curl output to sh”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.